This Week

A Model For Learning Jewishly

A Pluralistic

A.PPROACII

A cutting--edge Israeli day school, supported by the Frankels

Wes,t,

Leant

of Bloomfield Hills, successfully mixes a broadly based
Jewish curriculum with secular studies.

JUDITH SUDILOVSKY
Special to the Jewish News

Jerusalem

obody dreads being sent to the princi-
pal's office at the Jean and Samuel
Frankel Traditional School in Jerusalem.
In fact, most people voluntarily find
their way there, creating a nearly nonstop flow of
traffic through the office of Barbara Levin, a
Detroit-born educator who is winning plaudits for
the exceptional school she runs.

Judith Sudilovsky is a freelance writer in Israel.

6/30
2000

6

Levin, who was born Barbara Goldsmith, stays
unruffled as one teacher comes to make photo-
copies, another stops by to say hello and two girls in
shorts and sandals come to complain about an inci-
dent on the playground.
That Levin even has her own office at all seems
like nothing short of a miracle, she says. When the
school began in 1976, it faced so much religious
opposition, the municipality could not provide a
building. The religious parties saw the school as
infringing on their power.
The first school year took place in an asbestos
barracks, remnants from the British Mandate period.
Levin, and a group of other determined immi-

grant parents, battled hard for their revolutionary
idea: the creation of a school that would provide a
pluralistic Jewish education for Israeli children,
including their own.
Had it not been for the generosity and foresight
of Jean and Samuel Frankel of Bloomfield Hills and
their friends, who have supported the school from
the beginning and provided the initial seed money,
the public school would never have come into being.
Today, the school is housed in a two-story structure
of Jerusalem stone, and over the years, the Friends of
Frankel School Foundation in Detroit, has provided
additional funding.
On June 7, the unique role the school has played

